Page 32 of Cilka's Journey
“What better way to learn nursing than by doing it. I’ll be your teacher. I’m sure the other nurses will help and be grateful for the extra pair of hands. What do you say?”
“I don’t know… Yelena Georgiyevna. I don’t know if I belong here.”
Yelena puts a hand on Cilka’s shoulder. Cilka tries not to flinch at the intimacy of the touch.
“I know I don’t know you very well, Cilka. But you are good at this, and we would like your help. Will you think about it?”
Yelena smiles warmly, like a sister. Cilka swallows. She can hardly bear it. The guilt she feels is overwhelming. She thinks of her hut-mates after they come in, huddling by the stove, unwrapping wet fabric from their frozen feet, groaning. But she also thinks of Olga’s face when she hands her the real tea she has just boiled on the stove. This is a terrible decision and she doesn’t know why, again, she has been singled out.
“Can I ask, Yelena Georgiyevna, why you are here?”
“You mean, what did I do to be assigned this position in Vorkuta?”
Cilka nods slowly.
“Believe it or not, Cilka, I volunteered to be here.” She lowers her voice. “My family always believed in a… greater good.” She nods to the sky. It is forbidden to talk about religion, but Cilka understands what she is getting at. “My parents devoted their lives to helping others. In fact, my father died doing so, fighting a fire. I try to honor them by carrying on their mission.”
“That’s very good of you,” Cilka says. She feels overwhelmed.
“Although,” Yelena says, her brow creasing, “I must admit I didbelieve, broadly, in the project of the Soviet Union—the Motherland calling, and all that—but it is quite different tobehere.”
Cilka sees her turn to look back at the people lying in the beds behind them.
“I’d best stop talking now,” she says, and pulls her face back into a smile.
“Thank you, Yelena Georgiyevna, for telling me. And I just hope the women in my hut can find better work, too. And soon.”
“I understand. I do too,” Yelena says. “See you tomorrow.”
Yelena takes her hand off Cilka’s shoulder, goes to leave. Cilka remains facing her.
“Is there something else, Cilka?”
“Josie—could Josie do my clerical job?”
Yelena thinks for a moment or two. “Not just yet. Maybe if we can use you full time as a nurse, we will bring Josie here. But will she be able to learn…?”
“I’ll teach her. She’ll be all right.” It is a risk, thinks Cilka. If Josie can’t pick up the tasks, the language, as quickly as Cilka, will she be punished? A punishment worse even than going back to outside labor?
“We’ll see,” Yelena says, and walks away.
CHAPTER 8
Long days and nights of darkness. The temperature drops to well below anything Cilka has ever experienced. She continues working in the hospital, never far from her guilt, trying to assuage it by smuggling back food for the women in the hut. Bread, vegetables, margarine. Real tea. Just enough for them to eat each evening, lest there is another raid by Klavdiya Arsenyevna. Antonina Karpovna gets a larger portion than Cilka’s hut-mates each night.
Over the next few months, Cilka absorbs all that she is shown and told at the hospital like a sponge. She becomes so good at giving injections that patients start requesting her. They will often wait, desperate, until she is free to tend to them. The fact she is minimizing pain rather than exacerbating it is a wonder for Cilka. She does still try to remember, as the ward overfills with desperate, frostbitten patients, that she cannot do more than she can do. And still, often, her mind goes blank and she runs on automatic, like an engine. Yelena notices, and tells her to take breaks, but if she could stay at the hospital twenty-four hours a day, she thinks she would.
Returning each night to her hut brings conflicting emotions. Not wanting to leave “her” patients; needing to see Josie and the other women to know they have made it through another day of carrying, stacking, lifting, picking, their eyes streaming tears from the icy wind onto the fabric wrapped across their faces. She leaves earlier than the women and comes back later, so she does not have to sit idly while they wrap and unwrap themselves, aching, head to foot.
And then there are the frequent nighttime visits by the men. Always outnumbered, the other women have very few “nights off,” the men coming into their hut changing often. Cilka and Josie’s protected status as the “camp wives” of Boris and Vadim keeps them from being brutalized by others, though not protected from the cries of their hut-mates. One evening Josie laments to Cilka that she is unhappy at Vadim’s failure to appear, finding herself jealous that he has other women he prefers to her. This is difficult for Cilka to hear. She does not want to tell Josie how to feel—she knows how this abuse can affect a woman, a girl, in many unforeseen ways. But she does say that if she were her, she would feel only relief when he stays away.
After a five-day absence, Boris and Vadim enter the hut. Josie jumps up, screaming at Vadim, accusing him of being unfaithful. Vadim slaps her hard in the face, before pushing her down on the bed. Cilka is shocked—is Josie losing her mind? She doesn’t want Josie to be killed. She wants to hit Vadim herself, feels that fire burning inside her, but instead, later, she simply cautions Josie to be careful. It feels wrong, and inadequate, but she doesn’t know what else to do. For the next few days Josie ostracizes her, making comments to the others about the easy life Cilka has in the hospital. The thaw in their relationship has frozen back over. Elena, one night, loudly tells Josie to grow up—they are all benefiting from the extra food Cilka smuggles to them from the hospital, the uneaten patient meals she has become expert at hiding in her clothing.
Indeed, each night she comes in and empties her pocket on the edge of her bed, quickly breaking up the food so no one else has to do it and be accused of uneven portions, then turns away as the women leap forward and snatch at it. If Antonina is not there, she tucks her portion back in her pocket, as it’s rude to leave the temptation out in front of starving eyes.
She turns away because it is so hard to see the women’s unwrapped, bony fingers snatching. Their chapped, sore-encrusted lips opening. Their veiny eyelids closing as they take as long as possible tasting and chewing the food.
Cilka gives Elena a small, surprised smile for having come to her defense. Though Josie’s words sting. Yes, Cilka is strangely lucky. But also cursed. If they knew of where she had been, for all those years, while they still had an abundance of food and drink and warmth. While they still had families and homes.
